Spring 2012

Spring has always been my favorite season, but this year I can't seem to find it within me to embrace it.  The "Ides of March" EF3 tornado that struck Dexter was due to the unusual spring heat wave.  That in and of itself is reason not to embrace the early spring we have this year.  The blooming trees and flowers seem to be rushing through their regeneration process.  I saw daffodils blooming before I saw crocus, and at the same time as beds of snowdrops bloomed.  Forsythia bloomed two weeks earlier than the earliest date heretofore (March 24), and two days later the green leaves on the forsythia bushes began to pop out.  Seems to be we enjoy the glorious yellow for a few weeks before the green overtakes it.  Flowering pears and weeping cherries have burst into bloom, and the deep coral-colored hawthorn bushes have flowered.  There are even buds forming on the lilacs.  It seems like everything is rushing and tumbling upon each other.  Almost all of this even before the merest hint of green appeared on bushes along roadsides. The serviceberry trees haven't even bloomed!  The grass has greened up and actually needs to be cut.  And as I sit here, I see a Santa that got overlooked when things were being put away.  I can't find it in myself to sing my goofy forsythia song to my kids this year.

Underlying this malaise is the devastation wrought by the tornado.  Homes have been destroyed; lives are forever changed; the once beautiful canopy of trees along Dexter-Pinckney Road won't be restored for 100 years; this is the sudden new normal of our town.  Things we never had to deal with are now front and center, unceasing, in our daily lives.  I am not uncognizant of the reality of the fact that I have not been directly affected by the tornado; I know that; but oh, the devastating aftermath!  If this is how I feel, how must those who have directly suffered from the violence of nature feel!  It seems so wrongly self-pitying to be so tired and exhausted, but I that is how I feel.